The Thousand Emperors

something completely unrelated?

Whoever turned out to have killed Vasili, the last thing he wanted to do, should the killer prove to be present, was blurt out that he’d found a piece of evidence. For the moment it was best to leave the book where he had found it, tucked out of sight beneath Vasili’s corpse. Fortunately, none of those present appeared to have the least interest in getting close enough to the body to see the book wedged beneath it.

‘Those mechants,’ said Luc, nodding up at the machines floating just overhead. ‘Did they belong to Vasili?’

‘They did,’ said de Almeida, stepping up beside Cheng, one hand covering her mouth and nose. ‘They’re linked into the security network for the whole island.’

‘Any sign of them having been compromised?’

Zelia nodded. ‘Someone figured out how to erase the house records going back for some days. The mechants’ memories are linked into those records, so any data that might have told us who’s responsible for this was also wiped.’

‘Why haven’t you just gone ahead and re-instantiated Vasili from his backups?’ asked Luc. ‘Surely you could just ask him who did this?’

Zelia’s lips tightened. ‘All his backups were erased remotely, presumably by whoever was responsible for his murder.’

Luc stared back at her, shocked. ‘Would that have been easy to do?’ he asked carefully.

‘No,’ she replied, shaking her head. ‘Not easy at all.’

Luc glanced at the Councillors clustered by the entrance. All of them, except for Cheng and Cripps, the latter regarding him with an openly malevolent expression, looked scared. Instantiation technology had kept them all alive for centuries, but when Vasili had died, he had died forever, and none of them wanted to share in his fate.

‘Are the backups centrally located?’ he asked.

‘No, they’re widely distributed,’ Zelia replied. ‘Their locations are a carefully kept secret, for obvious reasons.’

‘But somebody must know where they’re all located.’

Zelia sighed and shook her head again. ‘No, I’m afraid not. We programmed AIs to take care of placing them in secure but unknown locations. Nobody has the right to know where anyone else’s instantiation backups are located. The only thing I can tell you is that as far as I know, they’re all located somewhere in this star system, but not necessarily on Vanaheim itself.’

‘Whoever did this, then,’ said Luc, ‘must have had an unprecedented level of access to your security systems.’

‘I think,’ muttered Cripps, ‘that’s what I’d call stating the fucking obvious.’

Borges sniggered. ‘Any other incisive observations you’d like to make, Mr Gabion?’

Luc felt heat rise in his face, but knew the danger of responding directly to such an insult. ‘Vasili was running away from something when he died,’ he said, turning his attention back towards the corpse and pointing towards the glass doors. ‘He was running from someone standing at the entrance to the library. As for the murder weapon, it’s pretty obvious it was a plasma beam of some type, set to tight focus.’

<This is ridiculous,> Borges scripted. <Any one of us could have said as much. I—>

Cheng threw a fierce look at Borges, who fell immediately silent.

‘Please continue,’ said Cheng, turning back to Luc.

‘If the weapon used to kill Vasili had been set to wide-focus, or aimed at him while he was standing, it would have shattered the rest of the glass in those doors,’ he said, nodding towards the patio. ‘The angle of the scorch-marks shows the weapon was aimed downwards. Vasili was already on the ground when he died, although it’s anyone’s guess whether he fell or was pushed down.’ He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. ‘Did anyone find a weapon?’

‘No, but the radiation levels in here are sky-high,’ said the second, unnamed woman in the group. ‘We’re all going to need immediate cell-regeneration therapy. I can arrange for you to receive medical attention before you return to Temur.’

‘An excellent suggestion, Alicia,’ said Cheng. ‘Is there anything else you can tell us?’ he asked Luc.

Luc tried not to think about the deadly radiation already seeping into his bones and muscles. ‘Has anything been touched or moved since he was found here?’

Victor Begum spoke up. ‘Not a thing. Zelia can vouch for that.’

‘Who actually found him?’

‘No one,’ said Zelia. ‘His home security network alerted us, but only once it rebooted itself a little over two days ago.’

Two days ago? ‘And that’s how long he’s been lying here? Two days?’

‘Criminal investigations are not our area of expertise,’ said the woman named Alicia. ‘Given the sensitive nature of things, it took us . . . some time to reach a collective agreement on a way forward.’

Luc stared at her. In other words, they’d spent the past forty-eight hours squabbling about what to do before bringing him here.

‘So far I’d say he’s making a better initial assessment than your own, Bailey,’ said Cheng, with an air of joviality